What she didn't know was that when that happened, Laz was going to take action to scare it away, but saw that the tiny, palm sized spider seemed to have jumped with the larger spider approached as though getting it's attention. The larger spider then ignored Laz and focused on the tiny spider for a moment before turning away. After it had left, the spider turned around and looked at Laz while waving a tiny leg at him, as though telling him it was no problem. Laz couldn't help but laugh at this cute little guy and pet him some more. Then he turned his attention to the girls.

As Ruby and Leona stood back to back, the ten spiders stood in place while watching them. In essence, both girls were actually in the late-early stage of Condensing while the spiders could at most be considered having just entered into the early stage of condensing. The difference between the two was enough were both sides being equal, the girls would be able to win without a problem. Or, that should be the case when you consider their amount of energy versus the spiders. The biggest thing to remember though was that there level's weren't far enough apart and the spiders far outnumbered the girls at five to one. As spiders, they were naturally more in tuned with their instincts and were used to hunting as a group. They also were in their element in the cave and therefore had a big advantage here. If you consider that besides her speed, strength and claws, Leona didn't have any other advantages and Ruby was still a big mystery since she never shared her abilities with Laz, the girls were actually rather out cla.s.sed. They could win, but they would need to be very careful about it.

Luckily for them, Ruby had rather good battle instincts and Leona had undergone training with Laz so both girls knew the importance of not being seperated. As such, a stand off had developed. Just after a minute of no action, one of the spiders grew restless and jumped at Leona, sending it's entire body at her. With her back covered by Ruby, Leona met the charge with her claws, using one hand to swat the spider away while slas.h.i.+ng with the other, causing a line of cuts to appear on it's body. Seeing their comrade fail, the other spiders started attacking as well. a couple jumped at them while others ran along the floor, trying to go for their legs. The girls held them back briefly, but they both ended up having to move away from eachother to do so. Seeing them seperate, the spiders grouped up and cut them off from eachother.

Ruby reacted first, switching from defense to offense and attacking the ones in the air. After deflecting one with a slash of her blade, she spun and kicked off the other one. Before the ones on the floor could reach her, she jumped and stabbed down, completely impaling the next closest one. Due to her jumping forward, she left he back exposed, allowing one of the runners to jump at it. Just before it was going to hit her, she bent backwards, looking like she had no bones in her body. As the spider missed and pa.s.sed over her, she sprang up quickly and stabbed at the spider flying over her, causing a deep gash that made it's insides burst out. In mere moments, Ruby had successfully killed two of her five attackers.

Laz was shocked to see her move like this as it made almost no sense. First, even if she was limber enough to arch herself backwards like that, how the h.e.l.l was she able to shoot up with such strength? He really wanted to know more about her abilities now.

Leona wasn't in a pa.s.sive position either. Knowing that she didn't need to defend Ruby's back anymore, she jumped forward and launched her own attacks, pouncing on the closest spider and jamming her claws through it's head before jumping off, avoiding the sneak attack by the runner. Leona repeated these actions of pounce, hit and run, managing to kill three of her attackers before the last two backed off. It's important to remember that although the spiders were fast and could move in any direction, and strong enough to be able to shove their legs into the hard stone floor, they still weren't very adept at handling things attacking them from above. It was becuase of this that Leona was successful.

As Leona faced off against her two final opponents, Ruby was slas.h.i.+ng away at her final three, but she was running into a problem. The underside of the spiders were pretty fragile, but after having successfully landed an attack on the one jumper, they stopped jumping at her. As she tried to lock them down enough to stab them with either the sword or the knife, they would be able to move out of the way faster than she could attack. Ruby wasn't as fast as Leona in this aspect. And trying to chop at them with either blade was less than effective as well since their skins were so hard that although it could draw blood, it only barely broke the surface. Also, her constant attemptes at stabbing them caused her blades to hit the floor more than once, sending sparks flying. A few times wouldn't have made a difference, but due to Ruby's enhanced strength, just the couple of times she did it weaked the survival sword enough that when she missed again, the entire blade ended up shattering on contact. With nothing more than a few inches left on it, it was now useless. And the knife wasn't looking much better.

Seeing that she could no longer use the weapons in her hands, Ruby's eyes gleamed with a sharp light. Laz, who had been watching on and getting ready to act, relaxed at this sight. Ruby then threw away both the broken blade and the knife and stared at the remaining three spiders. If spiders had eyes like normal people, one would have been able to tell that their eyes suddenly glossed over. But because they just had eight black eyes, the only thing one could tell by looking at them was that their eyes seemed to relax a little as their bodies swayed. Sudden;y, before they could react, Ruby sprang forward with incredible speed. Unlike Leona who was literally jumping and pouncing with great speed, Ruby actually shot forward as though a bullet out of a gun. She had discarded the weapons but it seemed like her fingers had taken on a rather pointed shape. In contrast to Leona's claws, Ruby's fingers didn't seem to grow out, but just became amazingly pointed. As such, when she encounted the first of the three spiders, she folded her hand into a blade shape and swung down. The force of her strike caused the spider to collapse on the floor with a large gash in front of it's head. Turning around to face the other two, Laz finally saw Ruby's face. It looked strangely mesmorizing with her pointed pupils, almost as though her eyes could steal your soul. Even Laz blanked for a quick moment before recovering himself. He also noticed that there seemed to be strange patterns on her skin.

Ruby repeated the same tatic over and over again, finis.h.i.+ng off the other two spiders in the same way. Neither spider chose to move or dodge, just standing there and swaying a bit as though they had lost all their senses. By the time she finished with her remaining two opponents, Leona had finished the other two spiders.

Seeing that the enemies were all dead, both girls collapsed to the ground, breathing heavily. The fighting itself had only last about half an hour this time, same as last time, but their nerves had been much tenser and they had to continuously utilize the energy in their bodies to maintain their top fighting state. Despite the smoothness of it all, both girls had been slashed at various points, causing dozens of rips and tears in their clothes, along with small gashes that further stained the already battered clothing. Seeing the fight finished though, they both looked at each other and laughed. They had won.

Seeing them lose the tense nature of fighting, Laz finally got up and set down the spider, ready to make his way over. Before he even took a step though, he felt the little thing jump on his leg and quickly crawl up his clothes, before settling itself on his shoulder. Turning his head to look at it, the little thing looked back at him and seemed to smile, almost as if to say 'I'm coming with you.' Laz just shrugged his shoulders and made his way over.

He first checked on Leona who was the closest. Her pants were in tatters but since they were skin tight to begin with, they remained clinging to her. Most of her s.h.i.+rt was nothing but sc.r.a.ps hanging off from her generous curves. Even laying down, her large b.r.e.a.s.t.s heaved up and down with her breathing while the s.h.i.+rt barely clung on. Without even a word to her, Laz kneeled down and took something out from the small pouch her was wearing. He then proceeded to rip apart the remains of her gray s.h.i.+rt, leaving her well sized mounds just barely covered by the purple bra she had on underneath. Just as she was going to object to his behavior, Laz reacted by placing a hand on her head and stroking it with affection.

"You did great. Just relax for a minute and let me help." His soft tone seemed to seep into her mind and Leona subconsciously relaxed.

Laz wasn't trying to do or be anything at the moment. He was just really proud of them and wanted to make sure they were ok. Therefore, the first thing that came to mind was what he knew about first aid. Calm the patient and check the wounds. Little did he know that such actions actually branded a rather different mark upon Leona's heart. This mark was a bit more supple that something like a warm feeling of close relation. This mark was more of how a sub felt pure bliss after being praised by their dom. Had Leona truely rejected such a thing, she would have flared up at Laz's behavior. Instead, she just relaxed and let him take care of everything else from here on. It was a very liberating feeling.

Leona's injuries were light, due in part to her strong body that Laz had helped her train up. Using a bit of the solidifing healing balm, it didn't take long for the bleeding to stop and the wounds to begin healing. In truth, the balm was something that Vivi had shown him how to make after killing a rather dangerous aloe vera monster. Just thinking about how stupid that whole thing was caused Laz to shuddered a bit. Not only was the monster born from an aloe vera plant, but it's leaves had sharp thorns that could allow it to chop a tree in half. But explain that to someone else? They would probably just laugh about it no matter how dangerous it was. Still, the aloe had mutated as well at the plant itself, causing Laz to have been able to grab buckets of this balm that could heal and protect a wound better than one could even imagine. It was almost magical.

Seeing Leona relax, Laz made his way over to Ruby. Whatever change she had gone through was still apparent on her supple body. The strange pattern that Laz had noticed earlier was actually small, tightly woven scales in a rainbow hue of colors. They covered the sides of her tanned skinned abdomen and looked like the ran down the sides of her waist and down her legs. At least, that was the best Laz could see based on wht was revealed. Without hesitation, Laz repeated his actions from before, ripping away the remains of her loose, brown s.h.i.+rt and revealing the toned, yet soft tan skin underneat. Unlike Leona who had worn an actual bra, Ruby just had a sports bra on to cover her slightly small yet full b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Inspecting her wounds, Laz couldn't help but run a finger along the reveal scales. The fact that they were sort of hard and yet warm was an interesting feeling that he couldn't help but take a few more strokes of. Just as he was going to continue, Ruby reach a hand over and grabbed his.

"Don't. They make me look like a freak. Like a f.u.c.king snake monster..." Ruby said, opening her eyes. Laz could now see what wasn't as clear before, her eyes looked like the eyes of a snake. Suddenly, her abilites made a lot more sense.

Realizing that the gaze she was staring at him with was scary, Ruby quickly closed her eyes and turned away. Just as she was about to slide away from him and get up though, Laz reached a hand over to her messy hair and gently brushed it while hold a hand on her stomach as though knowing she was trying to get away. She couldn't help but turn back to face him with wide eyes.

"You did great. Next time though, transform before you fight and learn to use your natural body. In the end, the only thing we can really count on is the body we have."

Feeling Laz's gentle touch, seeing his gentle smile and hearing his soft voice along with his hands still gently pressed against her hidious self, even Ruby couldn't find it in her to fight back or mess around. She just slowly laid back down and let him get to work while trying to calm herself to change back.

She couldn't stop the several tears that ended up escaping from her eyes in the meantime.